MARSHALL COUNTY
Cook up a real Mexican feast ... and invite a lot friends and family Long-time rumor is that Al Capone slept in Arab. Can that really be true? Couple seeks a monument for the county’s worst aviation disaster SUMMER 2017 COMPLIMENTARY
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Stability. Trust. Integrity. Call us old-fashioned, but we believe those things still matter in banking. We believe a bank should reflect the values of the community it serves. That includes actually being part of the community — and being there for the long haul. Choosing who to trust with your money and finances is a big decision. At Citizens Bank & Trust, we offer stability that makes a big difference.
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Arab 256-931-4600
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Elkmont 256-732-4602
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Rogersville 256-247-0203
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Visit us at CokerTractor.com *Offer valid on purchases made between 5/2/2017 and 5/31/2017. Subject to approved installment credit with John Deere Financial. Fixed Rate of 0.0% for 60 months. $500 OFF implement bonus is in addition to Low Rate financing and requires the purchase of 2 or more qualifying John Deere or Frontier implements on all Compact Tractors. (1) $400 OFF is in addition to Low Rate financing offer on 1R Compact Tractors. (2) $700 OFF is in addition to Low Rate financing offer on 2032R and 2038R Compact Tractors. (3) $2,500 OFF is in addition to Low Rate financing on 3025E Compact Tractors. Some restrictions apply; other special rates and terms may be available, so see your dealer for details and other financing options. Valid only at participating US dealers. **All Compact Utility Tractors purchased new from an authorized John Deere Dealer come standard with a 6 year/2000 hour (whichever comes first) Powertrain Warranty. See the Limited Warranty for New John Deere Turf & Utility Equipment at dealer for details. (+)Manufacturer’s estimate of power (ISO) per 97/68/EC.
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Welcome
Contributors Kate Gray is a Master Gardener and oversees the garden center at Guntersville Feed and Seed. She loves to help people hone their gardening skills and select landscape plants. But regardless of what you think after reading her first Good ‘n’ Green feature in this issue of GLM, Kate does not love iced tea.
In a 2007 countywide vote the natural bridge was named one of the Seven Wonders of Marshall County.
Land Trust offers an opportunity to preserve one of our wonders
I
hope Marshall Countians – and others – respond to efforts by the Land Trust of North Alabama to purchase the local natural bridge property like they responded three years ago when we ran a story on this unique landmark. The story explained how Jim and Carol Meekins fell in love with the natural bridge and bought the property in 1996 as a homesite. Their main objective was to save the formation, along with its caves, creeks and waterfalls from desecration and ruin by humans. The vast feedback the story generated told me that many people hold this place to be very special. Besides the preservation work the Meekins did on the property, they thoughtfully made it open for all to marvel upon and enjoy. When I interviewed them in 2014, they had no plans to sell but knew their age would eventually prevent them from keeping up the place. They did say they didn’t want to sell to just anyone. “This is not a place for a control freak, someone who would put up a no trespassing sign,” said Jim, who, sadly, died Aug.1, 2015. The Land Trust is certainly not just anyone. It’s just the sort of treasure the non-profit exists to preserve. Not only does the site’s unique biodiversity warrant protection, says Hallie Porter of the Land Trust, but unlike most of its other holdings, the natural bridge is accessible to those incapable of hiking to remote locations. The Land Trust so far has $20,000 toward the $500,000 needed to preserve the site forever. It’s a goal they can reach if all who cherish our wonder come to its help. For more information call: Land Trust, 256-534-5263; or visit: www.landtrustnal.org. David Moore Publisher/editor 6
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Seth Terrell’s summer will find him busy pastoring at North Broad Street Church of Christ in Albertville, teaching and finishing up a fine arts degree in creative writing. The remaining hours – many, he hopes – will find him in the kiddie pool with his daughters, 4 and 2, trying to avoid too many honey-do lists. Steve Maze, who lives in New Canaan, often writes about characters in his family. What he doesn’t tell people is that he apparently has some squirrels up in that family tree of his. At any rate, he been busy squirreling away stories for Good Life Magazine. Among them is a football story ready to go for the fall issue. Though not with family or friends, a recent good day in the life of Annette Haislip went like this … All of her azaleas were blooming, and she potted the last of her plants. Then, at the Arab Public Library (where she gets all of her books to review) and at The Flower Exchange, she was recognized for, well, her book reviews. Finished with his story on Crawmama’s, Patrick Oden has outfitted himself for summer. By his photo, folks in Marshall and Cullman counties are sure to recognize him anywhere. Right? Besides his photography business and freelancing, Patrick has started a new project. Check it out at www.lakecityalabama.com. Ad/art director Sheila McAnear loves to go kayaking. And she has snorkel gear from previous cruises she’s made. So all she needs is a sleeping bag and she’ll be ready to go camping with friends this summer to Cypress Springs in Vernon, Fla. After looking at pictures of the water there she is getting excited.
Publisher/editor David Moore used to talk (too much) about newspaper work with his wonderful wife. Now Diane hears all about magazine work ... plus goes to the PO, makes deposits, helps with proofreading and offers tons of support. David would run her picture here, but he’s probably pushing his luck as it is.
Fueling Your Life In Marshall County ... For Less
There’s a
Jet-Pep just down the road from Lake Guntersville
Saving at the pump... ... means more fun on the lake!
MORGAN CITY 593 Rockvale Road 256-498-2008
SCANT CITY 8191 AL Highway 69 256-753-2452
JOPPA 1438 Midfield Road 256-586-1733
Visit a
Jet-Pep near you today!
BOAZ 8930 U.S. Highway 431 N 256-840-9240
GUNTERSVILLE – 2 2112 Henry Street 265-505-0646
ARAB – 3 8640 U.S. Highway 231 N 256-931-9509
SARDIS CITY 12230 U.S. Highway 431 256-593-2945
1928 Gunter Avenue 265-582-1577
500 North Main Street 256-931-0567 2276 U.S. Highway 231 S 256-586-4353
CROSSVILLE 19575 AL Highway 68/168 256-561-3104
ALBERTVILLE – 2 9080 U.S. Highway 431 N 256-857-7092 5743 U.S. Highway 431 S 256-894-8354
Inside 10 Good Fun
Include the 10th annual wakeboarding tourney and hydroplane tests on your summer fun list
16 Good People
Susan LeSueur relates to “Small Town”
20 Good Reads
“Before the Fall” and a midnight in the day
23 Good Cooking
Yesenia Nunez shares some of her Mexican recipes for feeding family and friends
Dedicated to the memory of Sam Harvey 1930-2017 Thanks for all of the great stories.
32 Good ’n’ Green
Know when to prune your hydrangea
34 Tim and Finie Higgins
They offer you felicitations from the mountain overlooking Honeycomb
42 A different love story
Beth has woven her own special way into the lives of Heath and Laura Wilson
46 Good Eats
Crawmama’s iconic shack in Guntersville offers fresh seafood and unique ambiance
48 Al Capone
Steve Maze delves into the long-time rumor that the infamous gangster slept in Arab
50 Up the river
From here to Chattanooga ... an adventure
57 Crash of the C-119
It is Marshall County’s worst air disaster and a couple think it deserves a memorial
66 Out ’n’ About
Boaz parade of homes ... from 1898
On the cover: One of the many great photographers in Marshall County is Judy Kennamer, who lives at Point of Pines. She created the image on the cover from the annual fireworks show in Guntersville. This page: David Moore shot this picture of a towboat churning through the Gorge of the Tennessee River downstream from Chattanooga. Find out more about the cruise from Guntersville in this summer issue of GLM.
David F. Moore Publisher/editor 256-293-0888 david.goodlifemagazine@gmail.com
Vol. 3 No.2 Copyright 2017 Published quarterly
Sheila T. McAnear Advertising/art Director 256-640-3973 sheila.goodlifemagazine@gmail.com
MoMc Publishing LLC P.O. Box 28, Arab, Al 35016 www.good-life-magazine.net
Mo Mc PUBLISHING LLC Proudly printed in Boaz, Marshall County, by BPI Media Group
Fords REALLY do cost less in Albertville
IL
“Kevin Norton, the salesman at Gilbert & Baugh, was young, energetic and knowledgeable. I ended up buying a top-ofthe-line 2017 Ford 150 King Ranch in the new white-gold color. I didn’t even bother going to any competitors. I’ve bought three new vehicles from Randy and those guys. They’ve always been pleasant to work with.” – Retired USAF Col. Kenny Cobb of Guntersville, shaking hands with Randy Baugh. Plane furnished by Larry Fortenberry.
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Something for everyone celebrating a special occasion • BRIDAL • BABY • BIRTHDAY • ANNIVERSARY • RETIREMENT MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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Photographer Patrick Oden caught the action at Spring2Summer 2015. He also photographed some of the young riders who won prizes.
10th wakeboard extravaganza promises to be ‘mightiest’ yet N
ormally billed as “Bama’s Mightiest Wakeboard Tournament,” Spring2Summer 2017 should be mightier still. June 23-25 is the event’s 10th anniversary, and the promoter – WakeFactory – expects to pay more than $10,000 in prize money. That should draw more pro wakeboarders than usual to Lake Guntersville’s Spring Creek … Which in turn will mean more insanity on the water … Which in turn will bring out more folks to watch the action. And participate. The event is not just for the pros, notes Dustin Middlebrooks of Guntersville, one of WakeFactory co-founders. There will be 15 classes of competition – attracting some 70-85 riders – starting with 12-and-under kids. And you don’t have to be a hotshot to sign up and ride. “For beginners, we’d love for it to be your first experience,” Dustin says. “We want to let the youth see what it is like to get a really good ride.”
H
ere’s the lineup: • Friday, June 23, preregistration 7 p.m.-10 p.m. at Steel Ford Boat Launch on Thomas Avenue, located off Ala. 79 beside Publix. It’s the best place to watch from, too. That night you can also watch rail jams on the water. Registration is $40 for members of the World Wakeboard Association; $70 for non-members. • Saturday, riders hit the water about 9 a.m., starting with the youngsters. Those classes will have awards around noon. Next come the serious riders who’ll do crazy stuff on wakeboards until 6:30 or 7 p.m. • Sunday will have demos 11 a.m.-3p.m. For more info, call: Dustin Middlebrooks, 256-503-3762. – David Moore 10
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Good Fun
It’s summer, ... have a a blast Artist Pamela WillisWatters created “Ocean Dreamscape,” left, using oils and cold wax on a panel. • Now through May 26 – Pamela Willis-Watters exhibit Pamela’s exhibit at the Mountain Valley Arts Council gallery this month showcases the oil paintings she’s focused upon for the past few years. Formerly known for bold energetic works in pastels, her new pieces maintain the same feeling of shimmering light, movement and explosive colors that capture the viewer’s imagination. Formerly of Huntsville and Mentone, she now lives and works in Brookhaven, Ga. The MVAC gallery is open 1-5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays at 300 Gunter Ave., Guntersville. Admission is free. For more information: 256-571-7199. • May 11-25 – Free outdoor concerts The outdoor concerts presented by Mountain Valley Arts Council continue 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Errol Allan Park in downtown Guntersville. •May 11 – Day Trippers, classic rock •May 18 – Robbie and Blue Mourning, country gospel • May 25 – Josh Allison, classic soft rock (www.joshallisonrock.com)
Bring your lawn chair, friends and your dog. For more information, call: MVAC, 256-571-7199. • May 17 – Senior Health and Fitness Day Marshall Medical Centers and Marshall GoldCare 55+ is again hosting this popular – and free – event at Lake Guntersville Civitan Park from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Start the day with a warm up and stretch on the walking trail at 8:30 am. Then get ready for a fun morning featuring free giveaways, door prizes, games, free health screening and information booths where you can talk with local physicians, therapists
and others offering health and fitness information. Reservations are requested for free lunch that will be served. Please RSVP at: 256-571-8025 or 256-753-8025 (Arab area calls). • May 19-20 – Poke Salat Festival The fun on the streets of downtown Arab at the 33rd annual event. It runs 2 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday. New this year is the Poke Salat Festival Bluegrass Band Competition starting at 10 a.m. Saturday on the main stage on First Street NW. First place wins $500 and a 30-minute opening act slot that night The annual Senior Health and Fitness Day at Civitan Park always draws a big crowd. Be part of it on May 17.
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for Canann’s Crossing and The Darrell Webb Band. Enter the pet parade at noon Saturday; support the animal shelter and perhaps win a blue ribbon for crowd favorite, biggest and smallest, best dressed and most unusual pet. Visit shops, fine art vendors, crafters, civic groups, church and school groups displaying their wares. Monster waterballs will again be part of the fun for kids. Vendor space for the food court filled up more than a month ago, so there’ll be plenty of good eats. Sponsored by the Arab Downtown Association. • May 25 – Kickoff for Alabama BiCentennial For its part in the Alabama Centennial, Marshall County will kick off the Year of Exploring by unveiling paintings and drawings of local historic places. The original pieces were started in April by local artists chosen to be part of the Marshall County Paint Out. A kick-off reception will be held 5-7 p.m. at Guntersville Museum. After the exhibit there, the works will rotate
through 2017 between Albertville, Arab, Boaz and Grant. For more information, call: Guntersville Museum, 256-571-7597. • May 29 – Memorial Day ceremonies Memorial Day makes for an extra long weekend, but take out time to pay your respects to those who died in the service of the country. The speaker was undetermined at press time, but you can attend the 11 a.m. ceremony in front of the Marshall County Courthouse or second one at 2 p.m. at Arab City Park. • June 1-July 16 – Tradition of Quilts This exhibit at the Guntersville Museum will highlight the history and legacy of quilts. Heirloom and reproduction quilts to include Civil War era and Dear Jane collections, as well as vintage machines and equipment. Weekly programs on Thursdays. The museum is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 1-4 p.m. Sundays. Admittance is free. For more information, call: Guntersville Museum, 256-571-7597.
• June 3 – Dragon Boat Races Drop by Civitan Park in Guntersville today and expect to see dragons on the water – dragon boat racing, that is. It’s the fifth annual fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity of Marshall County. Area businesses and groups are anteing up for their teams to fill one of the four 46-foot dragon boats with 20 paddlers who try to stroke their way to victory in various heats by paddling to the beat of a drummer in the front. Admission is free and the races start about 8:30 a.m. For information on fielding a team, call: Habitat, 256-744-2374; or visit: www.habitatdragonboatrace. com. • June 3 – Walking Tours of Guntersville First in the annual series of Lake Guntersville Chamber of Commerce walks starts at 10 a.m. at the Guntersville Museum. The walks, every Saturday in June, are led by a knowledgeable guide and last about an hour. Routes for the rest of the month had not been finalized at
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MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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The Wiggins Hydroplane Racing Team of Rainbow City will be at the trial run June 17. That’s its Unlimited-H1 boat at the left, competing in the 2015 races in Seattle. Photo courtesy of H1 Unlimited. press time, but you can learn more by calling: Guntersville Chamber of Commerce, 256-582-3612. • June 7-30 – Charlie and Doris Leverett exhibit Charlie Leverett is a master woodcarver, while his wife, Doris, is an award-winning photographer. The Boaz couple’s work has been individually and
collectively featured in gallery exhibits, museum shows and traveling exhibits and is now coming to the Mountain Valley Arts Council gallery. MVAC will hold a reception for them 5-7 p.m., June 8. The MVAC gallery is open 1-5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays at 300 Gunter Ave., Guntersville. Admission is free. For more information: 256-571-7199.
• June 17 – Hydroplane testing This is the warm-up for the return of big-time unlimited-class hydroplane racing on Lake Guntersville, set for June 22-24, 2018. The fastest racing boats out there, their turbine engines can blast them across the water at 200 mph. Three of the unlimited boats will be on the lake making trial runs, one at
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Sara Evans performs before a huge crowd at last year’s Main Street Music Festival. Photo provided by the city of Albertville. a time, between 9 a.m.-4 p.m. (with time out for lunch). Spectators will be able to watch for free from the levee around the Spring Creek portion of the lake. Bring a chair and catch the extreme speed. For more info, call: Marshall County Visitors and Convention Bureau, 256582-7015. • June 24 – Boaz Pre-July 4 Celebration Recording artist Darryl Worley headlines the big free event that ends in fireworks and draws up to 10,000 people. Entertainment starts at 2 p.m. with the Boaz High School band and choirs. They’ll be followed by the high energy Martin Family Circus and the Soul Survivor Band. It’s a free concert, but bring a food item for the local food pantry and your lawn chairs. Food vendors and arts and crafts booths will be on hand. It all happens on Billy Dyar Boulevard and, for the first time, is sponsored by the Boaz Chamber of Commerce. For more info: 256-593-8154. • July 4 – Fireworks over the lake The booming tradition continues about 9 p.m. with a fireworks extravaganza over Lake Guntersville. Watch from a boat if you have one. 14
MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
From land, it’s best viewed from the walking trail between Civitan Park and the pier. Come early and expect a crowd stretching across the Ala. 69 causeway. A community wide effort, the city of Guntersville spends about $20,000 on the big drawing event. WTWX 95.5 FM will simulcast music to the fireworks. For more information call: Guntersville Chamber of Commerce, 256-582-3612. • July 5-27 – PaperWorkers Local art exhibit PaperWorkers Local is an artist co-op in Birmingham’s Southside with a primary focus in printmaking. Its exhibit at the Mountain Valley Arts Council gallery will highlight its mission of making and developing an appreciation of original prints and works of fine art on and of paper. “MVAC is excited to have such a large, dedicated group of artists to exhibit with us,” says its executive director Mason Holcomb. A reception for the group will be held 5-7 p.m. July 13 at the gallery at 300 Gunter Ave., Guntersville. Admission is free, and its normal hours are 1-5 p.m. Wednesday-Friday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays. For more information: 256-571-7199.
• July 20-Sept. 3 – Urban Trends in Yarn The Guntersville Museum exhibit will highlight yarn and knit graffiti and other innovative trends with fabrics that are re-inventing the craft. The museum is open 10 a.m.4p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 1-4 p.m. Sundays. Admittance is free. For more information, call: Guntersville Museum, 256-571-7597. • Aug. 4-5 – Main Street Music Festival No details were available by deadline time, but you can expect big doings for the eighth annual festival after drawing some 30,000 folks into downtown Albertville over two days last year. The key to that success is free concerts by good entertainers, says city council member Ben McGowan, who works with the festival. One thing new, though, will be a 9x13-foot LED screen set up to the side of the stage. “The people who sit toward the back will be able to see better,” Ben says. “We feel this will give us the ability to make people a lot happier.” Last year, he adds, 350 volunteers helped make the concert go smoothly, and works are underway to ensure that continues. Be watching for news on this year’s performers.
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Good People
5questions I was born in a small town. And I live in a small town. Probably die in a small town. Oh, those small town communities. – John Mellencamp Story and photo by David Moore
P
roud product of a small town, Susan LeSueur custom designs new homes and remodeling plans for people to build dream homes in North Alabama. She’s spent much of her spare time over the years making Arab and Marshall County better places in which people in any home can live. “I came by it naturally,” she says of her attractions to architecture, home design and interior decorating. In the 1960s, her father, Charles Glenn, was a draftsman/design engineer for the former Speedring aerospace company in Huntsville. In the ‘70s he went to Marshall Tech to teach drafting and later retired from teaching while at Arab High School. “My daddy would come home at night from teaching and draw house plans, and I would sit by him,” Susan says. “It’s something I grew up with. I learned by watching him.” Her mother taught first grade at Grassy Elementary (now Brindlee Mountain Elementary). “She would decorate our home,” Susan says. “She took doors off because they took up too much room. She’d change rooms around, too. Once she moved my father’s bedroom chest into the kitchen. He came in and said, ‘Where are my underwear?’” When Susan got old enough to tote furniture, she picked up the habit. “My parents would come home from school and I’d have the whole house re-decorated,” she laughs. “I’d move 16
MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
Susan LeSueur
Drawn to her small town, she’s working to improve it and all of Marshall County my bedroom to the guest bedroom. I’d move mattresses. I took all of my mother’s clothes out of her walk-in and made it a den.” After Charles moved to Arab High School to teach, Susan took drafting from him. She was the only girl in the class. And instead of starting her on drawing nuts and bolts like the other beginners, Charles had her drawing houses.
S
usan earned her degree in 1985 from Auburn – not surprisingly in architecture. Most of her classmates lit out for jobs in big cities. Not her. “The majority went to Atlanta. Some to Birmingham,” she says. “I had no desire to go there. I wanted to come back home.” Small-town life beckoned. Adding to the appeal, her father started The Glenn Group for her. She held down the fort during the day, and Charles and Arab High’s other drafting teacher, Ricky Roe, worked at the office after school. In February 1987 she had a blind date with Jim LeSueur. The blinders apparently came off. They got married that October, and she moved into his condo in Huntsville. They still lived there in 1992 when their daughter Courtney was born. That changed in 1999, when she brought Jim to her small town and Courtney to Arab City Schools. Susan laughs at the suggestion that John Mellencamp’s rock song “Small Town” sure seems to fit her. Several years ago, one of her cousins used the song as the music to a family Christmas video. “I liked it before that,” Susan says. “John Mellencamp was my ‘80s guy. It was popular during my high school days. It was a cool song, and I related to it.” While she loves her small town, she’s
also proud that Courtney spread her wings and moved to New York City’s Brooklyn borough. With a graphics art degree from the University of North Alabama, Courtney works as the art director for News-O-Matic, a digital children’s newspaper. “I’m glad Jim and I gave her good values and a sense of pride,” Mom says. “She’s independent and going after what she wants. She’s brave to try new things and be adventurous.” Susan’s comments hit near another verse of “that” song … Got nothing against a big town. Still hayseed enough to say, “Look who’s in the big town.” But my bed is in a small town, Oh, and that’s good enough for me.
1.
Why is designing houses and interiors so appealing to you? I love to see people come in and they are so excited they are building their dream home. They have all these ideas, and I really listen to them, to what they are excited about. Then I can turn those concepts – their dreams – into a reality. That’s what’s so appealing to me. I love it so much. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a bungalow or farmhouse or contemporary house or a Victorian. Whatever I’m working on at the time, that is my dream baby. I love it. It’s fun. Sometimes people think they can bring in ideas, and think I can come up with something the next day. But sometimes it takes a little while to get all the puzzle pieces together. I can work all day on something and not come up with a solution. But I can set it aside and get on another project, and maybe a week later I’ll come back to it and it all falls into place. There’s also a real sense of
Snapshot: Susan LeSueur PERSONAL LIFE: The only child of Charles and Linda Lou Black Glenn, Susan was born in the former Arab Hospital April 16, 1962. Married Jim LeSueur in October 1987; daughter, Courtney. EDUCATION: Graduated from Arab High School, 1980. Earned a degree in interior design from the School of Architecture at Auburn University, 1985. CAREER: Joined her father in the Glenn Group on Main Street in downtown Arab in 1985 and continued to operate the business as owner after he died in 2010. INVOLVEMENT: Founding member and past president of the 3-year-old Marshall County Women’s Guild, which works with the Foundation of Marshall Medical Centers; member of the Arab City Schools board; member of the Arab Historic Preservation Commission and the Downtown Redevelopment Authority of the City of Arab; formerly served on the Arab Strategic Planning Committee, Arab Musical Theatre Committee, Marshall County Christmas Coalition and the board of the Marshall County Leadership Challenge.
satisfaction in designing houses and remodeling projects. I know where the first house I drew is. I go by and tell people that’s it. My husband is so tired of me saying that I drew this house and that house (laughs). But it’s very exciting and satisfying to see a project go from paper to someone living in it. My number one hope is that there’s a sense of satisfaction for all involved. They don’t have to be big projects for me to love them. But I’ve done a house with an airplane hangar built onto the side of it. I have done generations of families – that makes me sound really old – but I’m doing a house now for the children of a client.
2.
You’re a member of the Arab Historic Preservation Commission and the Downtown Redevelopment Authority of the City of Arab. What challenges do groups such as these face? And why are “historic” downtowns, large and small, important to America in general? Small towns are part of us. They are our history and foundation, how we started. They give us a sense of place, what we were founded upon. It gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling to know that. But if we didn’t have our history, we couldn’t have our future. Right now there is a big interest in rejuvenating downtown areas. People are wanting to live there and go back to their roots. They want to live downtown and walk to businesses and places for all of their needs. There are new communities being built that are like what downtowns used to be. Downtowns give character to an area. Anybody can go through a four-lane and automatically see neon signs and get the same burger they can get in Mississippi and North Carolina. Small towns offer unique shops, and each downtown has its own stores that are not going to be like those in another town or state. The craftsmen in small towns had their own unique styles. Certain areas have their own items they are known for. It’s important to support these business people. They don’t have the money and backing like the big box stores do. Mom and pop stores have had 18
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a hard time surviving, but they do. We need to support them so they continue to be part of the economy. Most of our old buildings in Arab are a little different from other historic downtowns. But if we don’t protect that, when our children grow up they won’t know what our downtown was like. We need to preserve our downtowns. I hate to tear down something just because it’s old. I think it’s important to make these buildings last. They give you a sense of pride in your community – a sense of belonging.
3.
You’ve been a member of the Arab City Schools Board of Education since 2004 and previously served as its president. By standardized test scores, Arab consistently ranks in the top 5 percent of the 137 school systems in the state. What does the system do best, and what challenges does it face? What we do best is have a culture of success and growth in our system because nearly everyone in the city wants to support our system. We have a lot of input from our community because it values education and wants to see our students succeed. Our teachers value education. We have smart students. We get less revenue per student than any school system in our county, and we still succeed and accomplish great things for them. It’s exciting what all we offer in this small town. We have a nationally recognized musical theatre department. Our wrestling team has won the state championship for the sixth time and five times in a row. A lot of our extra curricular activities do great and climb to the state and national levels. Our band. Our HOSA department, our consumer sciences … we have state officers in them. Our robotics group is great. Plus, we are starting to build new high school athletic facilities, which is exciting. I think our challenge is to keep this going, to sustain this culture of growth, this culture of success. When I first got involved with education it was with the PTO when my
daughter Courtney was in kindergarten. After she moved on in school, I wanted to continue and help and be a part and make sure all of the students succeed. Our school system is amazing.
4.
Over the years, you’ve served on boards and worked with a number of groups in Marshall County. Why is it important to you to be not just a citizen of Arab, but a citizen of Marshall County? Because we are all like a family. People across the county are like our cousins. If I can help them out … I go eat in Guntersville and shop in Albertville and Boaz. It’s neighbors helping neighbors. I had an art scholarship to Snead State Community College in Boaz when I graduated from Arab. I have friends from Snead I have reconnected with. We were kids cutting up in college and now we are doing business together. You feel they will take care of you. You know their background, their history. I have people come in my office who are so amazed at this little piece of heaven here in Marshall County. They never knew about it. I have clients now that moved to Huntsville from Boston. They were a military family. They decided to settle in Marshall County. They’ve been all over the world, and they brag about what a beautiful little gem we have in our backyard. Sometimes we don’t see it or realize it because we are here every day, but I hear this from people out of town. Lake Guntersville … it’s big and beautiful, and it’s so nice when you drive across it on the causeway. It’s breathtaking. If you cross at sunset it’s gorgeous. If you cross in the morning its calming. You see the fishermen out there. It’s just a great way of life to have for everyone in the county. Actually, I want to start exercising there. I think if you walked along the lake it would be much easier (laughs).
5.
What’s something most people do not know about Susan LeSueur? I’m an open book. There are no skeletons in my closet. But most people don’t know that I’m
deathly shy. I don’t even want to go to Walmart. One-on-one with people, I am OK, but when I am in a crowd, I just panic. A lot of people probably don’t know I was in a movie. I am a movie star! I can show you the one scene I was in to prove it. I was in “Tom and Huck” when they were filming in Marshall County in 1993. Jim knew one of the directors, who was sending his scout here to see the area. He asked Jim to take him to dinner. We’d just had Courtney, and Jim asked if the guy could get her in the movie. He asked how old she was. Jim said 18 months, and the guy said, “Well, your wife will have be in it with her.’
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They told us to report to a warehouse on Oakwood Avenue in Huntsville. We got there and found out Courtney was too young, but they said I could be in the movie. Instead of being shy and passing up the opportunity, I decided I would do it. I thought I’d get to hobnob with the stars and sit in a makeup chair. But they told me not to wear any make up. Instead, I had to sit around in the dirt in tents for days. We filmed all night long to 4 a.m. It was not glamorous. It was lot of waiting, but it was an experience I’ll never forget. One day Jim came out to the set with this guy he was showing around and Jim did not even recognize me. I was a small town townswoman. But
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I did have a pink shawl. All the other townswomen had on brown. In the movie you can find me because I have the pink on. It was fun, but it was not what I thought it would be. I got paid minimum wage. And the bad thing was they didn’t even tell you how long you were going to be there. My mother had my baby. The stars had their own tent. All of the food was catered, but we ate separate from the stars. We didn’t get to mingle. I did get some pictures with the stars, but we didn’t sit around and talk. It was out of my character being in a movie – but maybe in character being townswoman LeSueur. Good Life Magazine
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Good Reads
Events after this plane crash take readers on a riveting ride
True story offers a dual-war perspective on Japan, U.S.
n “Before the Fall,” Noah Hawley, creator of the intriguing TV show “Fargo,” has written a clever mystery thriller that is difficult to put down. On a foggy August night in Martha’s Vineyard eleven people board a private plane for the short flight None of them has any to New York. They idea that sixteen minutes include the plane’s owner, from now the plane will a wealthy TV news mogul, his wife, two crash into the sea ... children and their armed bodyguard; a Wall Street financier, under indictment for money laundering, and his wife; a once successful painter attempting a comeback after battling alcoholism; and three crew members. When the plane plunges into the sea, two passengers survive: Scott, the painter, who suffers a dislocated shoulder, and 4-year-old JJ. They’re miles from land. The crash is investigated and regarded as a deliberate act. The FBI and the TSB become involved. Media frenzy ensues. Attempts are made to cast Scott as the perpetrator. JJ, heir to a fortune, becomes a pawn to those who wish to profit from his misfortune. Carefully woven into the narrative are chapters that reveal the background of each of those on board, which provides clues as to who has motive for deliberately crashing the plane. The most touching aspect of the story is the warm relationship that develops between JJ and Scott and their interactions with the aunt who receives custody of the boy. – Annette Haislip
amela Rotner Sakamoto’s “Midnight in Broad Daylight” is a remarkable true story of the extraordinary Harry Fukuhara, whose family was divided between the United States and Japan during WWII. Harry’s father immigrated to the Seattle “Harry, Japan has attacked area in 1900. His death in 1933 forced his wife Pearl Harbor ...” and children to return to Hiroshima for family assistance. Facing culture shock and unable to assimilate, Harry returned to the United States at age 18, as did his sister. When war breaks out, they are sent to an internment camp in Arizona. To leave the camp, Harry joins the U. S. Army, goes to the Pacific as a translator, becomes part of the Military Intelligence Service and excelled at his job. Meanwhile, his mother and brothers in Japan are caught up in the militaristic brutality and economic deprivation brought on by the years of war. The brothers are forced into youth military programs before being conscripted in 1945 in the last desperate mobilization. But before the feared invasion occurs, an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. After Japan surrenders, Harry is among the forces that occupy the country. His immediate concern is the fate of his family, especially after witnessing the devastation caused by the bomb. Sakamoto explores both countries with meticulous, riveting detail made all the more compelling by blending both American and Japanese perspectives. – Annette Haislip
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Oscar bastes his grilled chicken with Mexican-style marinade. He’s worked 21 years for Wayne Farms.
Yesenia loads the blender with ingredients from her salsa recipe. She works at Browns Kar Mart.
Oscar and Yesenia Nunez go all out for Mexican feasts Story and photos by David Moore
W
“
hat can I bring?” That’s the standard question Yesenia Nunez hears when she invites family and friends to dinner – which is quite often. “A lot of being hungry,” is her standard reply, because she’s sure to have a feast of Mexican dishes prepared. Feeding crowds is part of Yesenia’s proud Mexican heritage, but it wasn’t always that way. Born in Mexico, she was raised in California, along with her five siblings. “Mom was a hard worker,” Yesenia says. “She wanted more from life. That’s me.” Life, however, was rocky with her first husband, whom she married at age 16.
She was 20 when she came to Albertville to visit an aunt in 1994. Housing was so much more affordable than California, and Yesenia felt the town would be a much better place to raise her three children. So she moved here, but she was basically on her own, which brought loads of responsibility. “I discovered that cooking made me feel good,” Yesenia says. “When I was stressed out or worried, I would cook and cook. It made me feel good. I’d come up with ideas and throw stuff in.” Though she mainly prepared simple Mexican dishes for herself and the kids, it still entailed a learning curve. “My first few batches of tamales, I threw away,” she laughs. “I couldn’t even eat them myself.”
Good Cooking Beyond cooking, she also desired a good husband. “My prayer,” Yesenia says, “was that the Lord would let me find somebody who would treat my children as his own.”
T
hat prayer was answered in 2000 when she met Oscar Nieto. She loved how her young son took to him. What’s more, meeting Oscar also brought a quantum leap to her cooking. “It’s something we enjoyed doing together,” she says. “I started cooking a lot. I discovered it was something I loved.” Six years ago, Yesenia’s love of cooking was forced to a back burner. Shortly before turning 37, she began having reoccurring dreams of herself wearing a beautiful white dress. She told Oscar she believed God was warning MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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Yesenia Nunez, back left, loves sharing big meals with family and friends. She’s standing in front of her son-in-law and
daughter, Seth and Carmen Hernandez of Pinson; husband and son, Oscar and Abel; and grandson Anthony Cortez, 8. Standing to the right of Yesenia are her sister-in-law, niece and brother, Adrina, Briana and Raul Cervantes of Albertville; their other children Jerry and Mercedes; and, far right, Javeier Oscoa, Adrina’s brother, of Albertville. “I like to feed him as a way of saying thank you,” Yesenia says of Javeier, who’s retired from the Navy. her of pending death, so she got a mammogram. That’s when Yesenia learned she had breast cancer. Armed with Oscar’s support and her faith, she went to war against it at Marshall Cancer Care Center. In addition to feeling sick from treatments, she felt badly about being unable to cook for her family. Oscar was lucky to get a sandwich, much less the sort of Mexican feast she enjoyed preparing. It was a tremendous relief when she “graduated” last August after being cancer-free for five years. “I’m going to start cooking again,” she HABANERO SALSA (Pictured at right; for those who like it seriously hot.) 8 habanero peppers, diced 4 limes 1/3 onion salt to taste Boil habaneros for five minutes. Puree 2-3 minutes in a blender with lime and onion.
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announced. “We’re Hispanic – we hate to eat out.”
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s testament to her and Oscar’s love of cooking, they get together two or three times every week with family and friends for dinner parties. Her sister-in-law and brother, Adrina and Raul Cervantes, are involved in most of these get-togethers. “We have to eat, regardless,” Yesenia says. “And it makes you feel good to cook and share a dinner.” Last fall, she and Oscar bought a house on the other side of Albertville (they’d been living behind Walmart)
and completely remodeled it, including creating a large, modern kitchen that they use heavily. “We are,” Yesenia says, “the American dream.” That said, though they usually cook Mexican food, she also does spaghetti, pork loins, mashed potatoes and such. For Thanksgiving, the family wants turkey and gravy. “But,” she laughs, “we make tamales and all of the other Mexican dishes to go with it.” Here’s a sampling of some of her and Oscar’s greatest Mexican hits … YESENIA’S TOMATO SALSA 3 Roma tomatoes, whole 2 large jalapeño peppers, whole 1 small onion 1 large pinch of cilantro 1 avocado, peeled and diced ½ cup water salt to taste Boil tomatoes and peppers. Put boiled ingredients – including the water used for boiling – into blender with onion and cilantro; puree 2-3 minutes. Add avocado.
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GRILLED CHICKEN 3 whole chickens 3 oranges 4 dried peppers ½ 3.5 oz. box/brick of spiced annatto seed paste 8 garlic cloves 4 Tbsp. white vinegar 8 pieces of cloves salt Split chickens in half. Squeeze oranges along with the five other ingredients; puree for 2-3
minutes. Rub sauce on the tops and the insides of the split chickens. Heavily salt the chicken pieces. (It’s much better if you let it sit overnight.) Preheat grill to 300. First cook with the carcass side down for 20 minutes. Then flip every 10 minutes or so, sprinkling both sides once with chicken seasoning and basting with leftover marinade. Cooking time: 45 minutes to one hour.
BAKED BEANS Pot. Add salt and enough water to cover them about an inch and a half. Cook six hours on high. Fry bacon, then add sausage and fry another 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, onions and pepper and fry 5 minutes more. Stir ingredients into bean pot, cover beans and cook low for 20 minutes Wash beans and put them in Crock more.
2 cups dried canary white beans 1 tsp. of salt water 1 lb. bacon, cut in small pieces 1 14 oz. Polska Kielbasa sausage ½ onion, diced 1 Roma tomato, diced 1 jalapeño pepper, diced
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FRIED MEXICAN RICE (Oscar’s recipe and tip: “We love to cook and blend in whatever we think will taste good.”) 1½ cups white rice 2 Tbsp. corn oil 2 small pkgs. of Sazón Goya seasoning with cilantro and achiote 1 Tbsp. garlic salt 2 cups water, hot Fry rice in a skillet with corn oil until golden brown. Add water, garlic and Sazón Goya. Boil until water evaporates. PINEAPPLE WATER 1 fresh pineapple 2 gallons water 2 cups sugar (or to taste) couple of drops of yellow food coloring Peel, dice and puree pineapple. Add to water with sugar and coloring.
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10 tilapia fillets 6 cups water 2 Tbsp. salt 4 cloves garlic 1 bunch of cilantro 3 carrots, shredded 1 ½ white onion, finely chopped 8 small limes
TILAPIA CEVICHE (You can substitute shrimp for tilapia in this recipe.) Toppings tilapia in the water for 5 minutes. Drain 1 medium cucumber in a colander about 10 minutes or until 2 Roma tomatoes, diced fish is cool. Shred fish in a bowl with a 1 avocado, sliced fork. Add vegetables with fish; squeeze Tapatîo Salsa Picante or salsa of your limes and mix well. choice Serve in soft or hard taco shells or dipped on a plate. Top to taste with In a large pot, boil water 20 minutes tomatoes, cucumber, avocado and with salt, garlic and whole onion. Boil salsa. Serves 8 people
GUACAMOLE 2 avocados, peeled 1 jalapeño pepper 1 Roma tomato 1 very small onion 1 clump cilantro ½ lime Finely chop ingredients. Mash avocados in a bowl. Add chopped ingredients. Squeeze in lime juice and mix well. Anthony Cortez tries out his grandmother Yesenia’s guacamole on a tortilla chip. It’s also delicious with ceviche, above. 28
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MOLÉ 12 chicken drumsticks 3 Tbsp. salt 4 garlic cloves water 6 dried chili peppers 2 slices white bread Tbsp. of sesame seeds 6 pieces of cloves 4 dried peppercorns ½ bar of dark chocolate 1 Tbsp. peanut butter 2-3 Tbsp. corn oil 3 Tbsp. white flour Boil chicken, salt and garlic 45 minutes in water. For sauce, combine next seven ingredients and lightly fry in oil long enough to melt the chocolate. Puree 5-10 minutes. (You might have to puree in two batches to fit n blender.) In a clean, deep skillet with oil, add flour. Pour sauce through a strainer and stir into skillet (shown at left). Cook uncovered 30 minutes over medium heat. Skin drumsticks and dip into molé. Serve in a bowl over rice with more molé on the side. 30
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31
Good ’n’ Green
How to prune hydrangeas for a superb summer show
Story by Kate Gray Photos by David Moore
E
very southern gardener knows that a yard is not complete without the quintessential hydrangea. Known for their variety of big, showy blossoms of white, pink or blue, they now have an even wider variety of hybrid colors to choose from. When the plants fill out their greenery for the spring, we start to look for the buds that promise that perfect Southern show. But what to do if there are no blossoms? Quite often, I meet customers and fellow gardeners whose hydrangeas are failing to bloom. These people exhibit true and earnest distress. 32
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The first question I generally ask is, “When have your hydrangeas been pruned?” That’s because more often than not, trimming and pruning at the wrong time can prevent hydrangea from blooming, and there’s nothing to be done but put more sugar in the tea and wait until next year. But no lover of hydrangeas need suffer a drought of blossoms. With just a little attention to the types of hydrangeas in your landscape, you can avoid this distress for good. So let’s break it down …
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ome hydrangeas produce blooms only on “new wood” (this year’s growth), and other hydrangeas bloom on “old wood” (last season’s growth). There are a few exceptions to this rule, but we’ll get to that in a few minutes.
Hydrangea Macrofyllia, or Mop Heads, above, can put on a beautiful show during the summer.
Here are two popular members of the macrophylla group: • Bigleaf hydrangeas, also known as French hydrangeas, are those with the very large, pompom-like blossoms of blue, pink or white. They produce flowers off of the previous season’s growth. • Lacecap hydrangea, which has disk or cap-shaped heads sprouting delicate single flowers along the edges. Both of these should always be pruned in the summer, after flowers have blossomed and begun to die back. Trimming them in the spring will most likely leave a gardener without their pretty blossoms for another season. The hydrangeas below produce blossoms on new growth, so they should only be pruned in late winter or very early spring to ensure you’ll have summer flowers:
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You can safely prune oakleaf hydrangea in the early spring by removing old, dead wood only. • Smooth Hydrangea (H. arborescens ‘Grandiflora’), such as Annabelle; • Oakleaf Hydrangea (H. quercifolia); • Peegee Hydrangea (H. paniculata ‘Grandiflora’).
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he popular Annabelle hydrangea is a smooth hydrangea, and should be lightly pruned just after its flowers fade in early autumn. However, they have also been known to produce a second flush of flowers if pruned lightly after the first flowering. Just be sure you don’t over-prune your Annabelle or the branches will weaken over time. Now on to the one known exception to pruning hydrangeas … The “Endless Summer” variety is a hybrid and produces flowers on both old and new wood. It blooms in early spring and blooms again later on new wood, so can continue to produce flowers all summer. Cut faded flower stems to half their length to encourage new growth and buds. Then prune after the last blooms in the fall to control the shape and height of your plant. If you’re not sure which varieties of hydrangeas you have, bring a leaf or branch from one of your plants to the Guntersville Garden Center or other reputable nursery; or simply snap a picture and bring it. We’ll be happy to help identify the variety for you. Then follow these simple guidelines and you’ll have beautiful, lush blossoms every time on these southern garden staples. Oh, and pass the sweet tea, please. Good Life Magazine
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Felicitations from Tim & Finie Higgins, presented with affection from high atop Iris Point
The mountainside home of Tim and Finie Higgins overlooks Honeycomb Creek as it turns out to the main channel of the Tennessee River. Gazing further back to the east, seven miles away, beyond Walker’s Point, one can see the eastern tip of the Ala. 69 causeway across Brown’s Creek. It’s a stunning view from their home in Iris Estates, some nine miles southwest of Grant. The interior of their home has a New Orleans flavor – they were born and raised there – and joyfully celebrate their Catholic faith. Long ago, Finie began using a guest bedroom as her theatrical “prop room,” complete with a walk-in closet for more props. A mishmash jumble of items from hundreds of scenes, the room is packed with theatre paraphernalia, memorabilia, far-flung hat collections, an old typewriter, programs, Viking horns, Mardi Gras beads and several bedecked mannequins.
Besides teaching drama and theatre work over the years, the prop room is an outgrowth of Finie’s Felicitations, the unique business she started in 1976. “Felicitations” are words of greeting, expressions of praise for achievement or good wishes for special occasions. Clients request the felicitations for friends or loved ones, Finie writes them as poems and, either by phone or in person as a costumed character, performs them for the recipient. She recently wrote this felicitation to sum up how she and Tim came to live on the edge of this mountain: God was our Realtor, He led us to this space, The view, the land, our home, Infusing all with grace. Interesting details hide behind Finie’s summation …
The Higgins’s house has 4,300 square feet, three bedrooms, a theatrical prop room and five baths, including one that Tim installed in the three-bay garage. The house sits on 7.5 acres. Initially the front yard was covered with 350 juniper bushes, which were low-maintenance until they got too big. So Tim, the designated gardener of the couple, dug them up, hauled in topsoil and planted 5,000 square feet of grass. In addition to installing the sprinkler system, in his spare time over the years he built a half-mile trail down the mountainside to the home of their friends, Carol and the late Jim Meekins’s house. It’s famous for the natural bridge in the yard. (Please see related column on page 6.) Story and photos by David Moore
I
t’s hard to miss the romanticism flowing between Tim and Finie. It flows from way back. They started dating at 16 and 15 while attending separate all-boy and all-girl Catholic schools in New Orleans. “It was 1962, Oct. 6,” Tim says of their first date. He bought her a charm bracelet to commemorate the event; the single charm, a calendar, had 10-6-62 on it. He graduated from Jesuit High School, which generated many of the city’s movers and shakers. He quickly notes he was neither a mover nor shaker and was able to go there only because of a scholarship. He withdrew from college because 36
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he was spending too much time working at Sears Roebuck in order to fix up a ’51 Chevy jalopy he used for dating “a young lady,” he says with a broad grin aimed at Finie. The Vietnam War was escalating at that time so, after receiving counsel from his father, he decided to join the National Guard. After basic training, his father counseled him to seek employment with a utility company. He became a lineman for Southern Bell.
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he couple continued dating, became engaged and married in 1967. A son, Patrick, was born in 1969 and a daughter, Lauren, was born in 1971. Always recognizing Tim’s potential, Finie encouraged him to complete his college curriculum and earn a degree.
Through night school, Tim graduated from Loyola University in ’72 with a degree in business administration. As he climbed Ma Bell’s corporate ladder, the family moved to Birmingham in 1978, and he took graduate classes at night at UAB. As Tim’s responsibility within BellSouth increased, relocation within Alabama was necessary. And in 1995, they purchased a 7.5-acre parcel of land in Iris Estates near Grant. After a couple of years with an architect, construction contractors and others, they finally moved into their home in 1997. The former lineman retired in 2002 as general manager over BellSouth’s North Alabama area. Finie, as Tim says with affection, was the “driving force behind me.”
Stepping around the entrance hall to the house, one is dramatically confronted with Finie and Tim’s balconied great room and its million-dollar view of Honeycomb Creek. Double doors from the adjoining dining room give access to the comfortable screened in porch. The porch overlooks a deck and pool. A second deck holds a sunken hot tub. Handyman that he is, Tim built the decks and installed the pool and hot tub. MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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or her part, upon graduating from St. Joseph’s High School in 1965, and still dating Tim, Finie began working on a degree in English at the University of New Orleans, while feeding her emerging talent for writing, performing, singing and storytelling. “Later on, we continued to be good Catholics and we knew we were going to get married and have children,” she says. 38
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Finie continued college night courses at UNO after the children were born as well as teaching at private pre-schools. In 1976, she hit a “game-changer” when diagnosed and bed-ridden with rheumatoid arthritis. While Tim was “Mr. Mom,” she underwent knee surgery, medications, injections and physical therapy. “It was a rough time,” she says. “I was down for the count for quite a while during this time.”
Refusing to allow the disease to take control during this period, Finie became even more creative. “I can write, I have a voice,” she told herself. So, she created a stay-at-home business: Finie’s Felicitations. Referring to herself as “Drama Mama,” she’d compose felicitations then recite or sing them over the telephone to the honoree. Once back on her feet she began performing some of the requests in person.
Walking up the stairwell to the second floor mezzanine, one is greeted by a rather striking lady, assuming mannequins can be lady-like. The stairs open to a pool room, with a second mannequin stationed in the corner keeping an eye on the living room downstairs and the library on the far side of the mezzanine. Entering Finie’s prop room off the pool room is like walking onto the set of untold productions. Indeed, it contains everything she needs to stage her zany felicitations. Clients would call and provide insight into the honoree and the occasion. Finie would craft a poem, which was not only entertaining but captured the essence of the celebrant. After recitation by telephone or in person, a memento of the poem would then be mailed to the honoree.
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inie’s big break came when a popular New Orleans disc jockey heard about her business and called her to write clever poems
as introductions that she read live on air. Finie could write these poems with a fiveminute warning. Soon Finie’s Felicitations, words for every occasion with the personal touch, began receiving even more orders for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and such. She created a get-well felicitation to a patient who’d had a hemorrhoidectomy. She wrote and performed felicitations for President Gerald Ford, Steve Allen, Pete
Fountain, Al Hirt and other notables both local and national. Finie began creating characters to perform at events, such as Mrs. Mourning, Bertha Date, Annie Versary, Magna Cum Loudmouth and Minnie Pausal. She designed her own costumes, wrote and directed her own “one woman” show. She sometimes changed costumes between gigs in a phone booth with Tim acting as a security guard. MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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“I’m from New Orleans,” she laughs. “I was not born naked. I was born in a costume.” When the Higgins family moved to Birmingham in 1978, her business moved with them.
A
s Tim moved up with Ma Bell and the family moved around, Finie continued to create as well as continue her education. She attained a degree in theatre and drama from UAB in 1989. While living in Birmingham, she taught theatre and drama for BirminghamSouthern Conservatory, Our Lady of the Valley and John Carroll Catholic High School. While residing in Daphne, she was acting librarian at Christ the King School. In Huntsville and Guntersville, she taught at Oakwood College, Fantasy Playhouse, Whole Backstage and Kohl AcademyPerforming Arts. Now semi-retired, at times she still performs and does storytelling in the community. “People still contact me but I say, ‘You can’t afford me now,’” she laughs. “‘But I’ll do it as a favor.’ That’s why I have retained my prop room.” “Tim has humored me with this,” she laughs again. “After a while he figured if you couldn’t fight ‘em, join ‘em.”
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he Higginses now spend their time balancing their faith, family, friends and fun. They are most active in St. William Catholic church in Guntersville; volunteering many hours with its Society of St. Vincent DePaul, which provides assistance to the poor and needy within Marshall County. Their son’s and daughter’s families live in Birmingham, requiring many southbound excursions for “grand” activities. Their five grands are Emily, 21, Josh, 17, McKenzie, 14, Nicholas, 13 and Grey, 11. “They are our heart and soul,” Finie says. She and Tim enjoy domestic and international travel, making four to six getaways, some short, some lengthy. For their 50th anniversary later this year, they plan a special, fittingly romantic trip. “We have been very fortunate with many gifts,” Tim says. “Life has been good.” Felicitations are in order. Good Life Magazine 40
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Tim and Finie have a dining room but take most of their meals sitting together at the bar in the kitchen. The spilled wine, which sits out on the cabinet, is actually a plastic prop – and reflects Finie’s humor. Her nun collection in the kitchen window reflects that humor as well as her devotion. And the adjoining walk-in pantry helps keep the ”flavor” of New Orleans handy.
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Beth weaves her little way into a love story Story by Seth Terrell Recent photos by David Moore
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This is a love story. But perhaps not exactly what you might think. Yes, it has the markings of a traditional ballad. But for Heath and Laura Wilson of Boaz, this love story is about family. It’s about the immeasurable love parents have for their children. And it’s also about the outpouring of love from friends and strangers – all for one little girl and her family ...
labor of love, with few words of sorrow. They concentrate on the joy that comes from loving such a wonderful little girl.
first held a baby book and wanted to flip through the pages. Most parents might have brushed right past such a moment, but for the Wilsons it’s a moment they won’t forget.
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n August, Heath and Laura he best love stories are will have been married six only so because the heroes in years. They first met at a Target them face their most difficult store in Alabaster where they fears and challenges, and worked together. somehow their love perseveres. “Technically I was his boss,” Heath and Laura see the Laura smiles. “When you know, world differently than most you know.” folks. Though they are happily The work relationship grew married, Laura describes herself into a friendship after they as a more “type A” person and left Target, and the friendship Heath as a go-with-the-flow kind grew into a marriage and now of guy. a family with two beautiful Such differences in children, Beth age 3, and personality have supplemented Matthew, 4 months in May. each other, creating a stronger Beth was born with an marriage through trials with unexpected disorder that affects their little girl. But Laura offers one in 200,000 babies, called another perspective. Pfeiffer’s Syndrome. The “Beth,” she says. “Beth has syndrome primarily affects the made our marriage stronger.” bones of a child’s skull. Beth’s brain continues to grow, but the skull struggles to keep pace. feiffer’s Syndrome is so The syndrome affects rare that there isn’t always a other aspects of her life, fuses cookie-cutter plan for medical her elbows and makes her procedure. Choices must be vulnerable to other health risks made about which parts of the and concerns. Heath and Laura skull are best to be operated visit with doctors and hospitals upon, where and when certain all over the country to ensure surgeries should take place. With all of Beth’s medical needs, it was not easy getting Beth receives the best treatment Being forced into such to the beach last October for a vacation. But once and most effective, necessary decisions has made Heath and there it was wonderful and hit Laura and Heath how surgeries. Laura a team. But they are the There is no way to prepare first to admit they haven’t done important it was to not hold back their own family. for a child born with disabilities. it alone. They are surrounded The stress of medical travel, by a host of friends and family the ongoing care and equipment members who, even now with “We try to focus on how far she’s necessary for Beth’s wellbeing might the arrival of baby Matthew, step in at come,” Laura says. “We celebrate become too much for some families. a moment’s notice to support the young And the Wilsons have experienced tough milestones most parents wouldn’t family. consider milestones.” times. Yet the family and friends and fans of One such milestone came when Beth Yet Heath and Laura excel in their Beth spread beyond the home.
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Without a doubt, the Wilsons say, Beth has brought the family closer together. “People know us as Beth’s dad and mom,” Heath says. The support team starts with the family business, Wilson’s Fabric in Boaz. The 10,000-square-foot business has been a fixture in the community for 52 years. It began as a health and beauty store before Heath’s grandpa, Eugene, returned to Boaz from a trip he’d taken, with yards and yards of fabric for sewing and crafts. The business took off. Years later, Heath maintains the day-to-day operations at work, but it is precisely because Wilson’s Fabric is a family business that he’s able to be such a part of Beth’s life. The flexibility of the job allows him to attend her appointments and be home for her when he needs to be. The support does not end there. Beth’s Journey, a social media community made up of people who are interested and involved in knowing more
about Beth, has some 15,000 followers, nearly twice the population of Boaz. Heath and Laura use the site to inform people about Beth’s journey and wellbeing. “We even post the not so good stuff,” Heath says. “Just keeping everybody up to date.” The page has a GoFundMe link, but the biggest financial support the Wilsons feel comes from the annual yard sale held in Beth’s honor.
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hile financial support is great, and the Wilsons are gracious for the outpouring, they are even more grateful for those they meet, from places all over, who know Beth from the webpage. Sometimes it feels as though the whole town of Boaz, and even the broader North Alabama community, is one big supportive family. Laura is from Birmingham, but Heath was born in Boaz and has lived
most of his life here. The support Boaz has for the Wilson family is matched only by the Wilsons’ gratefulness. “No matter how long you’ve been gone,” Heath says, “[Boaz] still feels like home.” The Wilsons hope that through the store and through involvement in the community, they can give back to the place they love. Heath ran for city council last year and narrowly missed election in the runoff. His love for Boaz drives him to want to see the city thrive. “I think I have good ideas,” he says. “I love this place and just want to see it get better and better.” The love is mutual. Laura recalls several instances where someone recognized Beth in town, and, instead of gawking or drawing unwanted attention to the little girl, they came over and spoke to her and often introduced their own children to her. Not only has Beth made the Wilsons’ MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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marriage grow stronger, she has presented an opportunity for parents to discuss with their children how all people are different in their own ways. And how they are all important. Laura recalls advice she uncovered not long after Beth was born and passes it along for any families out there with difficult circumstances. “Don’t let your family be held back,” she says. She remembers first finding resolve in such words. It was during a family vacation to the beach last year, standing in the sand with the waves crashing around the three of them. And certainly the Wilsons are not held back. Laura still helps with bookkeeping for Wilson’s Fabric, and Heath, in addition to the store, travels all over as a high school and collegiate basketball referee. They are embracing the future, ensuring Matthew and Beth experience life in its fullness.
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itting in the Wilsons’ living room with little Matthew asleep in Laura’s arms and Beth joyfully cooing to Heath, it is easy to see the depth of this love story. Heath brushes Beth’s hair with his finger, makes a fist-bump to which she responds with a tiny balled-up fist. “She knows over 20 signs,” Heath says. Laura gently sways Matthew, who doesn’t yet know how lucky he is to be born into this family, and Beth gives a little whimper. Heath, a former college baseball player, gracefully swoops Beth into his arms and carries her for a diaper change. Laura peers at the sleeping Matthew. “We want our kids to feel loved,” she says. “That’s what anyone wants.” Good Life Magazine Beth, upper left, hands mom her toy telephone as if to say, “It’s for you.” Upper right, she gives dad a high-five. Beth has easily adapted to Matthew joining in the family mix. 44
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Good Eats
Iconic ‘treasure’ serves up fresh seafood Something almost magnetic lures people into the Crawmama’s unpolished building on U.S. 431 at the foot of Sand Mountain. It could be the friendly owners, Charlotte and daughter Kathryn Baucom, far left. Or the music and beach-fun casual ambiance. If that doesn’t do it, there’s always the top drawing card: their signature fresh seafood. Story and photos by Patrick Oden
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harlotte Webb’s parents were in the restaurant business in Guntersville while she was growing up. No wonder the definitive lack of fresh seafood in town at the time inspired her to action when she returned from the University of Alabama. “I just couldn’t get a good piece of fish,” Charlotte says. So Charlotte loaded her old red and white Ford box van with coolers and headed for the Gulf Coast. She went straight to the docks, loaded her ice-filled coolers with fish and seafood straight from the boats and headed back to Guntersville. 46
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With the blessing of the health department, she set up on the roadside in front of the old Walmart and quickly sold out. Before long, Charlotte had as many coolers in the van as it would hold, yet she couldn’t keep up with demand. “At one point I think we had more coolers than Walmart,” says her daughter, Kathryn Baucom. Something had to change. Charlotte’s parents owned the small shopping center where Crawmama’s is currently located, but it looked a lot different when Charlotte decided to open Crawdaddy’s Seafood Shoppe there in 1987. Still selling fresh fish and
seafood as they had done from the van, she was now able to add a 12-stoolcounter and a simple menu. Come opening night, the crowd that poured in stunned Charlotte. With the place packed beyond capacity, she recalls customers passing trays of oysters over their heads to get them to hungry patrons. Payment would be passed back. Resourceful customers spilled outside and, illuminated by car light, ate off tables they built from sawhorses used for the just-completed renovations. Such has been the story ever since.
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usiness continued to boom with
additions added to accommodate hungry seafood lovers. But with a business run by Charlotte and her daughter, the name Crawdaddy’s didn’t exactly work, so when Kathryn turned 18 and Charlotte made her a partner in the business, they decided Crawmama’s was much more fitting. As organically as Crawmama’s has expanded over the years, so has its eclectic decor evolved. “Our customers are 80 percent responsible for the walls,” Kathryn says. They bring in random items they think would make suitable adornments and ask to hang them on the walls … sometimes. “Like that tennis racket hanging right
there,” Kathryn laughs. “I have no idea where that came from.” But she and Charlotte do remember where a majority of the items came from … each has a special connection to a valued customer. And then there are the dollar bills. Walls are covered in them. Each signed by the person who hung it up. In fact, there are so many dollar bills hanging in Crawmama’s, they could quite possibly serve as Charlotte’s retirement fund … if that day ever comes.
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or now, mother and daughter work side by side in the restaurant and in the thriving catering business they run.
So if you are craving some seafood, head in one weekend and catch live music on the large patio while the kids play in the sandbox. Or have them cater your next event, large or small. And whether you’re a regular at Crawmama’s or you’ve never been, Charlotte and Kathryn will make you feel like family. The food is remarkably fresh and delicious. Plus, you’ll leave stuffed. And, if the thought crosses your mind, bring something interesting to leave behind. That way, you, too, can become part of this iconic Marshall County treasure. Good Life Magazine MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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Hotel Thompson, pictured here on a postcard, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. The 22-room hotel closed in the 1970s and was destroyed in a fire in 1989.
Al Capone slept here ... or did he?
even choose to come to Arab? And what personal connection – if any – did he have with anyone who lived here? There seemed to be no way of answering those questions, and I wondered whether the truth would ever be known. Until now, that is.
Story by Steve A. Maze
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id the infamous gangster Al “Scarface” Capone make a clandestine visit to Arab’s Hotel Thompson during the throes of the Great Depression? Many people in our area, myself included, never heard that rumor until about 10 years ago, but some locals obviously had. Those I initially spoke with would only willingly whisper in hushed tones about Capone’s possible visit, as if keeping some dark secret from being revealed. Maybe they were afraid the statute of limitations had not expired for those involved in hiding Capone. I decided to investigate the rumor in an attempt to remove the cloak of secrecy over the Capone issue that has surrounded the city for eight decades. The rotund Chicago gangster was said to have mostly stayed in his room at the Hotel Thompson during his short visit, and some swore “they knew someone who knew” that he stayed holed up inside the hotel for several days. Unfortunately, most of the people who “knew” had long passed away 48
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Besides “Scarface,” Al Copone was also known as “Public Enemy No. 1” and “Big Boy.” by that point. There was no one to interview. The key to uncovering the truth would be finding the answers to a couple of questions. Why would Al Capone
he story goes that George “Alva” Thompson, owner of the Hotel Thompson, allegedly became one of Capone’s doctors in Chicago. To be specific, Alva was considered to be a hotel doctor, since his infamous client based his operations out of the fourth and fifth floors of the Lexington Hotel at the time. Scarface – a nickname Capone acquired after he insulted a woman in a nightclub, and her brother slashed him – was one of the richest men in America at the time. And the men who hung out with him were not doing badly either – if they lived long enough. Of course, that would have included the doctors he kept on staff. It was apparent that Alva was doing well financially. His personal chauffeur drove him from Chicago to Arab many times in one of his beautiful cars. Even the Hotel Thompson had a “look”
Alphonse “Scarface” Capone (1899-1947) controlled organized crime in Chicago during Prohibition. From gambling rackets to bootlegging, it is estimated that his enterprises netted him close to $100,000,000. These mug shots were taken June 1931 when he was convicted not of murder but income tax evasion. of something seen in Chicago when he built it. The 22-room structure cost $40,000 and was equipped with hot and cold running water, air-conditioning and steam heat. The “Elegant lady,” as the hotel was described, was tastefully furnished with more than $6,000 (nearly $203,000 in 2016 dollars) in furniture Thompson brought back with him from Chicago. A huge ornate rug and rose velvet draperies greeted patrons as they entered the lobby filled with large rockers, overstuffed sofas and library tables. Guests signed in at the marble counter and walked up to their rooms on a stairway adorned with polished wood.
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olks around Arab were not accustomed to such luxury, especially during the Great Depression era. And that elegant lifestyle provided fodder for the connection between Alva Thompson and Alphonse Capone. The mob boss based his operations out of Chicago, but he also had a mansion in Miami, Fla., from which he reportedly planned the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. It was in 1929 that construction of the Whitesburg Bridge south of Huntsville was completed. The bridge – as well as the paving of what today is U.S. 231 from Huntsville to Fayetteville, Tenn. – made it the shortest route from Chicago to Florida. And guess what city was situated on that route. Arab. More fodder for the rumor.
In 1931, Capone was convicted of tax evasion and violations of the Volstead Act (alcohol regulations). The gangster reportedly asked Alva if he could hide out at his Arab hotel for a few days while on the way to his Miami home. Capone wanted to go somewhere where the feds would not be breathing down his neck so he could finish up some paperwork before beginning his 11-year sentence in a federal prison in 1932. All of this seems plausible to this point.
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efore he passed away, former Arab City Councilman Justin Ehman was one of the people I spoke to about Capone. Justin was married to Margaret (Eidson) Ehman, who happened to be the granddaughter of Alva Thompson. Alva was one of nine children, and the only son, of Arab’s first mayor, J.R.N. Thompson. “My wife and I actually lived with her grandparents for a while,” Justin said. “We had many discussions with her grandfather (Alva) but he never mentioned Al Capone, and I am sure he would have mentioned Capone if he had known him – or even met him.” Justin also explained Alva’s medical career. “Mr. Thompson did go to school to be a doctor, but after delivering his first baby he decided that he didn’t want to be a doctor anymore,” Justin laughed. Alva then became a Chicago businessman and owned a nightclub and
a car lot. Not only was he successful in Chicago, but Alva also built several of the downtown store buildings in Arab. Thompson’s businesses and Capone’s operations were on the opposite ends of Chicago from each other. It is possible that Thompson may have spotted Capone from a distance at some point, but there is no evidence they ever met or knew each other. It was a big city, even back then.
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he final nail in the rumor’s coffin is the fact that the Hotel Thompson did not open until Oct. 1, 1936 – four years after Capone began his 11-year prison term, not to mention his supposed trip to Arab. Capone was paroled late in 1939, suffering from paresis (caused by latestage syphilis). The gangster was in terrible condition – both physically and mentally – and was described as confused, disoriented and said to have had the mind of a 12-year old. That also eliminates the possibility that Capone’s visit to Arab could have been after he was released from prison. He simply would not have had the mental or physical capacity to make the trip. He was pretty much under someone’s care after his release from prison and died at his Palm Island, Fla., home on Jan. 25, 1947. For those who feel somehow cheated, taken in by a would-be juicy Al Capone story, don’t feel alone. Just remember Geraldo Rivera and his two-hour, live, 1986 TV fiasco on opening Al Capone’s empty vault. Good Life Magazine MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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A father and his grown son venture upriver to Chattanooga Story and photos by David Moore
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o telling how an adventure might unfurl. Still, you need to plan. So weeks in advance I began checking long-range forecasts. This was late last August, before anyone realized drought was slowly strangling the rain. Over 20 years or so, I’ve boated up the Tennessee River from Guntersville to Chattanooga about a dozen times. So captivating is the 106-mile adventure that friends and I have cast off with 40-degree winds whipping waves into choppy whitecaps that bounced a 21-foot runabout like a wet basketball. Not much fun at the moment, but it’s always fun recounting. The cruise I was planning last fall would be a first for my 30-year-old son, Hunter, and I wanted it perfect. I wanted him immersed – not in rain, but in the full experience of the river, the mountains and the adventure itself. In the trip’s lead-up, rain chances caromed daily from 20 to 80 percent and back again. Ultimately, Sept. 17-18 offered our best bet … even if we might miss the Alabama-Ole Miss game. Diane and René, my and Hunter’s respective wives, insisted it was a boys’ weekend. (Chickens.) Harley, Hunter’s 22-year-old stepson, initially was excited about the prospects. I said we’d be pirates. “Can we wear eye patches?” (He was serious.) “Over both eyes, if you want to,” I replied. Regrettably, Harley ended up working. So Hunter and I were alone on the manifest, which was fine, too. I love traveling from Guntersville to Chattanooga by boat. I wrote about it while 50
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I worked at The Arab Tribune and again when Sheila McAnear and I, as an aside for the Trib, produced the Arab Chamber of Commerce’s annual magazine.
When Sheila and I left the Trib to start Good Life Magazine in 2013, I knew I’d eventually write about the trip for our Marshall GLM.
Hunter Moore blows past the Capt. John Snodgrass Bridge over which Ala. 117 runs east of Stevenson. Snodgrass was a Civil War veteran from Jackson County. Hunter, 30, holds a degree in graphics art and marketing from UAH and is a district sales manager for Supreme Beverage in Huntsville.
“Good,” she said when I told her last September that Hunter and I had the trip lined up for a story in this summer issue. “It can be a Father’s Day story.”
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e faced a known hurdle early on. I don’t have a boat. Enter Kenny Chambers, the truly nice guy who owns Freedom
Marine in Guntersville. He kindly provided us a new, 21-foot Lowe tritoon with a 150-hp Mercury for the trip. When Hunter and I left, about 9:30 a.m. MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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Sept. 17, the drunken rain forecast had staggered back up to about 50 percent. We launched the boat in a few sprinkles, but they soon abated. And an overcast sky has never dampened the feeling of freedom in the blast of air and engine roar you get from gunning an open boat and churning up a widening white “V” astern. I had read the boat cruises wide open for 4-5 hours on a tank of gas. Our plan was to stop for gas at Hales Bar Marina in Tennessee, 73 miles away and about seven miles above Nickajack Dam. The gas gauge as we left showed just over threequarters of a tank. Get us there with plenty to spare, I thought. Surely. I’ve made this trip in runabouts, speedboats and a small cabin cruiser, but never on a pontoon. The third float, or log, 52
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on the Lowe gave us a super smooth ride as we cruised at about 35 mph, slicing a visible wake through the lake and an invisible but tangible one through the air. The look and feel of the Tennessee change as you travel upstream. Technically, Lake Guntersville begins with the tailwaters at Nickajack Dam, but by the time you reach Scottsboro – the first leg of the trip – the narrowing channel squeezes out any sense of being on a lake. While the plateau-line of Sand Mountain remains a constant to starboard for most of the second leg of the trip onto Nickajack, the mountains, for a while, disappear to port. Farther upriver, mountains again come into view off the port bow as the landscape continues to change. Nearing South Pittsburg, something else had also
changed: the gas gauge sunk to a quarter of a tank. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” I told Hunt. Nonetheless, I throttled back some on the Mercury.
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bout three miles shy of Nickajack, the motor sputtered. Just once. The gauge still showed a quarter-tank, but we knew immediately what it was. And one sputter was all we got. The Mercury shut down. We – and our joyous sense of freedom – were abruptly dead in the water. Instinctively reaching for my cell phone, my hand stopped in midair. Who was there to call? Fortunately, TVA was not spilling water at the dam. There was no current. No wind or drift.
Scenes from the cruise include an unexpected stop, top left, shot by Hunter; below that, TVA’s former Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant near Stephenson where, after demolition, Google has proposed building a $600 million data center run on wind and/or solar power. Above, the Tennessee River Gorge as it looked during a sunny but chilly trip in October 2011; at left, what it looked like on this overcast trip. Arriving in Chattanooga by boat is too cool, upper right. Something is always going on there, so make hotel reservations in advance. Ross’s Landing, right, provides convenient docking within walking distance of most downtown attractions; call ahead for a slip: 423-266-1316. The river is about a quarter-mile wide here. Several houses stand on the bank about 200 yards to port. “I’ll swim over there,” Hunter offered. “No way,” I said. “Your mom would kill us both if you drowned. Besides, what would you do when you got there? The boat would still be out here.” And then river magic occurred. Coming upstream was a bass boat. We sheepishly flagged down a man and his two sons. They were from the Knoxville area, fishing a high school bass tournament. They towed us to the occupied shore, and wished us well. Hunter stayed with the tritoon while I sought help. It felt weird climbing up the bank and walking up to a door and knocking, but, to be honest, I’ve done weirder things.
No one answered behind door number one, but, encouraged by not getting shot, I knocked at a neighbor’s house. Giving up again, I started next door when a lady rounded the corner of the second house. She apologized for not answering sooner. She’d been baking cookies in the kitchen. I related our plight, adding – in a shot at self-respect – that other out-of-gas boaters had probably knocked on her door, too. No, she said, I was the first. River angel that she was, she drove me several miles to Kimball, the cluster of fast food, convenience stores and firework outlets at the intersection of U.S. 72 and I-24, near South Pittsburg. I filled her husband’s lawnmower gas can and, forever grateful, Hunter and I were underway again in less than an hour.
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s captivating as I find this entire cruise, its last leg – the 40-mile run from Nickajack Dam to Chattanooga – is the most stunning. Exiting the 110-foot wide lock after a 41foot elevation lift, the river channel abruptly slings open its banks, exposing what rapidly grows into a three-mile-wide expanse of Nickajack Lake, embraced by mountains and bluffs, begging you to gun the motor. As we swept wide to port, the I-24 bridge came into view with mundane highway traffic driving to and from Chattanooga. I thrilled to zip under it all in an open boat. A few miles above Hales Bar (yes, we topped off the tank there), we entered the Tennessee River Gorge, sometimes called Tennessee’s Grand Canyon and historically MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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On this particular Sunday, as the river enters the gorge, the clouds sitting on top of the Cumberland Plateau seem to put a soft lid on the world, a quiet muffler on the heavily wooded slopes. A lone fisherman on a dock stands out starkly in his orange shirt. Hales Bar is the site of the first dam on the Tennessee River. Today, a marina (with gas) and a convenience store is located there. This day, the sky was growing more threatening by the minute. By Nickajack Dam, rain was falling as the sky loomed forebodingly beyond. 54
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known as Cash Canyon. Call it spectacular “It’s OK, Dad,” he said, keeping it palm and glasses, my eyes got pelted. for short. short. “I think I turned out pretty good.” I could barely make out the silhouetted Over the next 26 miles – before No argument there, but I was glad we shorelines and kept to the channel’s center, emerging under the looming promontory were on this adventure together. straining to see buoys. I was essentially of Lookout Mountain – your boat will We topped off again at Hales Bar (I try blind. I took off the sunglasses. I was still travel north, south, east and west as you to learn), but by Nickajack the weight of blind only the rain hurt more, so I put the wind through the wooded mountainsides the pregnant sky had become too heavy to glasses on again. and exposed rock escarpments of the hold. The rain started. Sailing against luck, Had we been driving on the freeway, Cumberland Plateau. we had to wait for the lock to fill. At least we’d have parked under an overpass and As the Tennessee waited. But we were so flows through the gorge, desperate to get out of the the mountains close in storm we boated on, the on the river, whittling Mercury running flat out. its width in places to several hundred yards or or a fully solid less and accentuating the hour we took a full-bore height of the 1,100-foot beating of nearly solid ridges. water. Finally, about Even with the the time we passed spacious deck of the Bellefonte Island, the Lowe, we were the rain slacked to a mere equivalent of a miniature downpour. We could rubber ducky in depths make out shoreline of a wildly huge bathtub. details. Unfortunately, the By the time we overcast failed to paint reached Marshall County the sky, water, forests the rain had mostly and rocks with the rich stopped. Finally back in light that makes the Guntersville, we stopped gorge extra gorgeous … out in Big Spring Creek the way I wanted Hunter to wring out the water. to experience it. Such Overhead, fluffy white Once back into Guntersville’s Big Spring area, of course, the sky cleared are adventures. They are clouds drifted lazily and the sun came out. The Moores dropped the Bimini top and what they are. in a stunning blue sky squeezed out everything wet from the heavy downpour. … what I’d wanted all e made good weekend for Hunter and time and docked the trip. it gave us time to stow everything and don at Ross’s Landing in downtown Arriving in Chattanooga by boat was raingear. Still, we were drenched when we Chattanooga about 3:30 p.m. Alabama certainly different than his usual mode of finally tied up inside the lock. was still in the first quarter by the transportation up there, Hunter later said. By the time we exited the gates on the time we’d walked a few blocks to the “It’s a lot better than seeing electrical Guntersville side, the rain was torrential. Marriott Courtyard and checked in. poles and buildings and signs along the Several fishermen had tied up in the lee We watched part of the game in our road,” he observed. “You still get changing of mooring cells, hunkering in their boats room between showers and saw the scenery, it’s just a totally different change. to wait out the punishment. Hunter and I exciting ending at the bar. Then we And it was great getting away from work, figured the storm would be moving east walked to Big River and chowed down. not having to be somewhere at a certain Morning arrives early in Chattanooga, or northeast, and we’d get out of it sooner time … the great escape.” if for no other reason than it’s on Eastern continuing downriver. And at least moving Running out of gas – and getting help seemed like progress. So I punched it. Time. On Sept. 18, it also arrived laden so quickly – provided an element of human Heading full frontal into the fray, in heavy, gray skies. Hopes for a vividly goodness to the adventure, we agreed. And the Bimini top was zero help. Hunter lit gorge were snuffed out, but the cloudthough we never feared for our lives, the attempted to disappear inside his rain covered mountaintops and lack of any wild rainstorm certainly added an element jacket. Trying to prevent the rain from breeze created a softly quiet beauty that of how non-caring nature can be. pelting out my eyes as I hunched over the Sunday morning on the water. Maybe it All in all, Hunter said, “It was worth the wheel, I wore sunglasses slightly down on put me in a wistful frame of mind. adventure.” my nose and shielded my brow with my “I wish I’d made more time for us And a reminder that you never know hand like a salute. to do things when you were a kid,” I exactly how these adventures might unfurl. Even through the narrow slit between confessed to my son at the helm. Good Life Magazine
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The crash of the
‘Flying Boxcar’ A C-119 with its distinctive twin-boom tail flies over Korea in this U.S. Air Force photo. Paratroopers could jump from the side doors in the rear of the plane, and equipment with parachutes could be pushed out of the large, “clamshell” loading doors in the rear of the fuselage.
Few people today know about Marshall County’s worst air disaster, though it’s hardly ancient history. It occurred near the Hebron community. Some residents there and in the surrounding hollows have at least heard about the crash of the C-119 “Flying Boxcar” on Dec. 29, 1954, killing nine military personnel. A few older residents even witnessed it. But the story has faded to a level of local lore, details blurred by repetition and passing time. One of the two surviving crewmen vividly recalls the event, though perhaps not all of it. (The second survivor died in a subsequent military tragedy.) Even the official U.S. Air Force accident report is not without inaccuracies. But more than enough clear facts exist to inspire a local couple to launch efforts to erect a monument or plaque to the nine men killed in service to their country and the two survivors who literally fell out of the plane before it nosedived into the rugged mountainside of Shin Point, near Paint Rock River in northern Marshall County. Here’s what happened ...
Story by David Moore
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t was raining Wednesday morning, Dec. 29, 1954, and Airmen Mike Kinnane and Robert Johnson got wet on the jeep ride out to the cargo plane, a Fairchild C-119 “Flying Boxcar” parked on the tarmac at Stewart Air Force Base in Smyrna, Tenn. The plane’s destination was BrookleyDonaldson AFB in Mobile, but the flight was doomed. Kinnane and Johnson worked
together as loadmasters, ensuring cargo was properly stowed in the boxcar-like fuselages of the twin-engine C-119s at the base. But unloading, especially in flight, was more interesting. “We pushed jeeps and stuff like that out of the back of the plane and watched them float to the ground on parachutes,” laughed Kinnane, who was 21 at the time and from Seekonk, Mass. Now 83, he described what happened that day during a telephone interview from his home in Islesboro, a town of about 600 on an island of the same name
three miles off the coast of Maine. Johnson, 21, was from Cumberland City, Tenn. Neither he nor Kinnane had taken Christmas leave. “We needed a few more hours to get an extra 50 bucks for flight pay on our paychecks,” Kinnane said. “So we signed up that morning for a flight going anywhere.” “Anywhere,” however, had serious weather issues. A Stewart weather forecaster briefed the pilot that morning on the possibility of thunderstorms. But the U.S. Air Force MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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accident report states that the forecaster failed to fully advise the pilot that the flight path would take them through a “black area” possibly containing severe weather. A full advising would have noted the possibility of tornadoes between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. from Anniston to Knoxville. Indeed, about 10 a.m. that morning a tornado would hit near Fort Payne, damaging 50 homes, The Huntsville Times later reported. The wreck report also notes that a Capital Airlines DC-4 flying from Chattanooga earlier that morning had nearly reached its destination of Birmingham when severe turbulence forced it to return to Chattanooga about 7:10 a.m. CST. Its flight path came within 12 miles of where the C-119 would get ripped out of the sky.
a “critical priority cargo,” which reportedly included two aircraft engines, inside metal containers, canvas-covered and chained secure in the rear cargo area.
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innane was jolted awake by a turbulence bump. “I came up about a foot off the engine cover,” he said. “Happens all the time. It wasn’t exciting. It got exciting later.” Whether “later” was a few seconds, as the report states, or a few minutes, as Kinnane said, the plane suddenly took a violent dip, slamming Kinnane and Johnson to the cargo compartment roof. The centrifugal-like force plastered them there for several seconds. “I went up to the ceiling and just stuck there,” Kinnane said. “Obviously the plane was falling.” Then, just as suddenly as he hit the ceiling, he fell, maybe 10 feet, landing on his back, apparently on the floor of the clamshell loading doors. He figures that’s when he broke his ix minutes after back, a serious injury he the DC-4 returned only learned of later. to Chattanooga, the “On my way down,” unknowingly fated C-119 the accident report quotes roared off the runway at Johnson as saying, “I Stewart AFB and into the bounced against the cargo Mike Kinnane, sole survivor of the crash today, went on to get his rainy skies. engine, which (sic) my arm commercial pilots license and flew charters in his twin prop plane. He At the controls was and leg hit.” says he always felt better in the air when he was behind the controls. Capt. Leslie Darrell “Johnson was on the Forguson, 34, who since floor with me,” Kinnane late in World War II said. “I don’t know how he had logged 923 hours as a first pilot. The plane leveled off at 6,000 feet, got there. We were trying to figure out how Although listed as an Air Force reservist, the pilot flying by instruments because to get out the door.” he’d flown more than 28 hours in the it was impossible to see through the The G-force inside the plummeting past 30 days. thick, wet “soup” of clouds. plane prevented them from reaching door Normally, the C-119 flew with a crew With nothing to do for the next few latches to the side or the clamshell doors. of five, but Leslie made six this day. hours, Kinnane said, he and Johnson, “I have no idea as to the configuration Along with him and the two loadmasters lulled by the constant hum of the plane, of the plane, other than I was on the floor,” were 2nd Lt. Charles Hawkins, listed as took a nap. Kinnane said. “When I looked over, the pilot; 2nd Lt. William Troy, co-pilot; and Kinnane said the accident report last engine in the steel chamber had broken Airmen Lawrence Foley and Richard contains incorrect details as to their its chain on the floor and was starting to go Miller, respective chief engineer and locations in the rear of the plane. sideways. I knew the weight was shifting radio operator. He got comfortable lying on some in that plane … we were in bad trouble.” Also on the manifest, Airmen Leon canvases piled on the floor of the Both men heard a ripping sound. Then McKay and Robert Shoemaker, 2nd protruding clamshell doors (See photo banging. A quickly-occurring quirk of Lt. Gerry Hall and 1st Lt. Jay Border, on page 59.) His parachute pack helped physics and forces was saving their lives. another reservist, had hitched a ride as soften the makeshift bed. Johnson sat The accident report states that at least passengers – perhaps on holiday leave. nearby in the last seat along the wall. 21 feet of the left wing, outside the port The Flying Boxcar was ferrying Neither was strapped in. engine, ripped off. It smacked back into
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Built by Fairchild Aircraft, the C-119 had a wingspan of 109 feet and cruised at 200 mph. It was nicknamed the “Flying Boxcar” for the shape of its fuselage, which was capable of carrying 67 troops, 35 stretchers or 27,500 pounds of equipment. So-called “clamshell doors,” visible at the pointed rear of the fuselage, opened to the sides to allow equipment and personnel to be loaded and off-loaded on the ground or, in the latter case, while airborne. the inboard side of the right tail boom then took off the entire tail assembly and the second boom like a flying sledgehammer. Along with everything else, the clamshell doors were knocked off the back of the plane. Kinnane and Johnson fell out of the gaping hole into the foggy soup of clouds.
“Right over the top of that mountain where that smoke is boiling up,” he told them.
“I can see it plain as day, and I’m 81 years old. Every time I think about it, it’s like it happened this morning.” “The airplane went nearly straight up when it lost that wing, and then it took a dive. When the wing came off, two men bailed out. One of them landed across the Paint Rock River.” The wing, in The USAF accident report faults turbulence that exceeded the structural limits of pieces, fell across oe Davis, 8 at the time, was the river, too. the airplane as the reason for the C-119 going down. hand-cranking an Osborne said some old corn-sheller in of it landed in the his father’s barn on Shirttail Bend Road at “That’s not smoke. It’s fog from the garden of one of his relatives, Buck Hill. the foot of Shin Point. rain. Stop lying …” “It had been raining,” recalled the Joe was saved from trouble when the lifton Cody of Route 1, New electronics manufacturing retiree, now 70 truth became obvious. The “fog” was Hope, told USAF investigators the day and talking in his living room in Hebron. growing darker and darker still – like after the crash that about 8 a.m. he was in “I heard something that sounded like smoke from burning fuel. his yard and heard the roar of a low plane. a loud explosion. It didn’t sound like “I looked up and saw pieces of the thunder.” t the time of the crash, 18-yearplane falling,” he said. “Then I saw the He dashed from the corncrib, out of old John Daniel Osborne was at home in plane, which was smoking very badly.” the barn and looked up. Hebron with his father. He guessed it was about 800 feet high “I could see part of a plane, I don’t “It was thundering and lightning,” the and heading toward Shin Point, which know what part it was, but it was going retired trucking company owner said by is about 300 feet above the surrounding down at a steady drop,” Davis said. “I phone from Ashville where he now lives. land. ran to the house and told my parents an “It was going to come a storm it looked “When I first saw the plane it was airplane just crashed. Part of that was a like.” almost in a nose dive, and the plane was guess on my part, but I didn’t know what The racket drew he and his father to making loud roars, going on and off,” else it could be.” the porch. Though the ceiling was low, Cody said. “I also heard one loud noise “Stop lying,” his folks said. Osborne said he could see a plane fly right that sounded like an explosion before it He took them to the window and into the broiling clouds. hit. The plane was burning when I first pointed east. “It jerked the left wing off it,” he said. saw it.”
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“When the plane hit the ground there was a big flash and a loud sound.” He said he spotted a large, barrelshaped object fall off to the left of the plane before it hit the mountain. “Then I saw three parachutes come out of the clouds,” Cody said. “Two of them looked fully open, but one looked as if he fell later and his chute was not open good.”
The USAF report on the crash of the C-119 includes this sketch of where various parts of the crashed plane were found.
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urling nearly straight down, the C-119 – minus its two booms, tail and a large chunk of left wing – was slightly inverted as it slammed nose first into the rocky woods below Shin Point, exploded and burned, the USAF accident report states. “The engines were torn from the aircraft on impact and thrown clear of the fire,” the report continues. “The left prop was torn off and clear of the fire, the right prop burned.” Kinnane and Johnson saw none of that. They were falling through the cloudy “soup.” As disorientated as they were, one might think they’d have trouble finding the ripcords to their parachutes. “Evidently not,” Kinnane said. “[I] found myself in space, then pulling the cord the parachute opened with a shock not too severe,” the report quotes Johnson as saying. “I saw Airman Kinnane above me and heard him say, ‘Hey, Johnson, how are you doing?’ and I answered, ‘I think I just broke my leg.’ Then I saw Airman Kinnane go by.” “I heard the crash of the plane just before I broke out of the soup,” Johnson continued. “When I broke out of the soup I saw the burning wreckage.”
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hen Kinnane fell out, he did not see Johnson leave the plane. “It was foggy, but then I could see Johnson coming down on his chute,” he said. “I saw parts of the airplane when I was falling.” Over the phone he insisted the accident report is wrong in quoting him as saying he heard the plane crash just before he broke out of the soup at about 1,000 feet. He insisted he neither saw nor heard the plane hit, but he did see a bright light on the ground and assumed it was the C-119 burning. Kinnane landed south of the Paint Rock River in a small field. As he 60
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unbuckled his parachute harness, he saw Johnson come down several hundred yards to the north, just across a river. He walked to the river “because I could hear Johnson hollering about his leg.” Kinnane briefly considered crossing the river until he realized how swiftly it was flowing. “I made it this far. Let’s not take any more chances,” he told himself. “Good luck, Johnson!” he called. “I knew he was
in halfway decent shape because of the way he was hollering.” From the river, Kinnane could see the plane burning and turned his attention to finding survivors. He did not recall the climb to the plane being particularly tough. “But I was a lot younger then,” he said.
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s he walked, Kinnane said
by phone, he met a civilian and they approached the wreck together. The report states that he met two civilians. After seeing the plane go down, John Osborne said, he and his father hurried to the crash site, walking the last part with an airman who said he’d been on board. Audie Rice Jr. of Route 1, Woodville, told an investigator the day of the crash that he’d seen the plane go down and immediately headed in that direction. He said it took 30 minutes to get there. Before arriving he spotted an airman and they went directly to the site. Reports of the wreckage contain various inconsistencies. But any way witnesses remember it and newspapers and the Air force reported it, the scene was grim. “The plane was burning badly,” Rice said. “There were still some small explosions. I saw the dead men lying in the plane wreckage … some of the men were burning.” Mrs. Grady Shelton of Click Hollow told The Advertiser-Gleam at the time that she and her husband saw the plane crash into the side of Shin Point and explode into flames 200 feet high. Rushing to the site, they found “lots of people” already there. “One of the men that parachuted out was coming up from a field below the plane, hollering to everybody to stay away, that it would explode again,” she said. Parts of the main wreckage and dead airmen were scattered over an area 50 by 100 yards. That evening’s Huntsville Times reported trees shorn off and parts of shoes lying about. Victims, badly burned, had to be identified from wallets and personal belongings. So intense was the heat from the burning wreck that soldiers from Redstone Arsenal and other firstresponders had to wait two hours before they could remove bodies, the Times reported.
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udie Rice left the site and called someone at Stewart AFB, saying a plane had crashed, that two men were alive, that he’d seen five dead ones. “He told me to go back to the crash and get the dead men out,” the USAF report quotes Rice as saying. When he returned to the site, soldiers had arrived. He relayed to them the
VFWs, Guntersville Historical Society support Breedens’ effort to raise funds for a monument
Long research puzzled together details of the horrific crash of a C-119 “Flying Boxcar” in
North Marshall County and led Milly Breeden and her husband, Jeff, to a single conclusion: A monument should be erected honoring the nine airmen killed and the two survivors. “They weren’t at war,” Milly says. “But they died in the service of their country.” They’re not alone in their thinking. The Guntersville Historical Society set up a fund and offered to handle public donations. And commanders of three VFW posts in Marshall The Guntersville Historical Society is County also support fund-raising efforts for assisting in raising funds to place a marker a monument or plaque. near the cash site. Contributions – which are “I was a youngster when that happened, tax deductible – may be mailed to: but I remember my grandfather talking Guntersville Historical about it,” said Ed Teal, head of VFW Post Society Marker Fund 6738 in Boaz. He supports the effort and P.O. Box 236 believes his 273 VFW members will, too Guntersville, AL 35976 “We support anyone who has been in The historical society will host a program the military,” said Johnny Brown, head of on the crash at its 2:30 p.m. meeting Sunday, Guntersville VFW Post 5173. “That was an May 21, at the Guntersville Library. For more unfortunate thing, and since it happened in Marshall County they need to be recognized information, call: Larry Smith 256-558-4331. here.” “We are veterans of foreign wars but always hope people honor and respect all of our nation’s fallen service members,” said Scott Gelding, head of Arab Post 6226. “Certainly these airmen died in active duty serving our country. To me, a monument is the honorable thing to do to respect their sacrifice.”
Curiosity about the crash took off seven years ago for Jeff and Milly.
Shortly after moving to their new house on Shin Point, they attended a Kennamer family reunion where Milly’s dad, Ray Kennamer, told her a U.S. Air Force plane crashed on the point in the mid-1950s killing nine airmen. Two others survived. The former owners of the Breedens’ house also knew about the crash but could offer only sketchy information. “It sparked my interest,” Milly says. She felt recognition was warranted but wanted to track down the survivors for their blessing before going any further. But she got nowhere on the internet. Some locals had heard about the crash but no one they spoke to had any facts until, last year, Jeff met J.R. “Unk” Osborne, whose brother, John, had witnessed the crash. From John, Milly got her first solid puzzle piece: The plane was a C-119.
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hat piece enabled Milly to find basic facts on the crash on the Aviation Safety Network. The report erroneously lists the crash site as Shin Hook Ridge, further hampering internet searches, but she passed on the date to Larry Smith at the Marshall County Archives. He found a story on the crash from the The Advertiser-Gleam. It included names of the survivors, Mike Kinnane and Robert Johnson. On the web, Milly finally found a Mike Kinnane Jr. living near the Rhode Island home listed for the surviving airman. She phoned. Mike Jr. said his father, Mike Sr. was in a crash but seldom spoke of it. He agreed to call his dad to see if he’d talk. He called Milly back and said, “I learned more about this today than I have in years. Dad wants to talk to you.” She was on her way, hopefully, to build a monument. – David Moore
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“This has to be it,” Jeff Breeden tells his wife, Milly, as they explore the side of Shin Ridge near their house, looking for the site where the C-119 crashed 63 years ago in December. Their search to understand what happened that day has taken them seven years. Now they know, and with survivor Mike Kinnane’s blessing, they have organized a fund drive for donations for a monument. message from the air base and said they carried seven dead men from the plane. They saw another one they couldn’t reach because of the fire. John Osborne said it was at least an hour before soldiers arrived. Then, “They covered that mountainside up. There were duce-and-a-half trucks and helicopters.” His father helped soldiers recover bodies, he said. “They took a parachute and put the pieces of them on it,” Osborne said. “Daddy found a watch. He pulled gashes open and stuck the watch in the man’s leg. Daddy said it needed to go with him.” Osborne said the “awfullest smell in your life” lingered over the wreck site for a year. His nightmares lingered much longer. “I’d be running up and trying to save somebody, and there wasn’t nobody to save. Everybody was dead,” he said. “I woke up a lot of nights in a sweat.”
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est he knows, Kinnane said, he wasn’t in a daze or shock at the crash site. But he was skeptical of reports of 62
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additional explosions and bodies being badly burned. “When I walked up there and saw the first couple of dead people, I said, ‘This could be worse. This could be me.’ I know that’s probably a terrible thing to say, but …” Kinnane saw corpses and body parts among what he described as smoldering wreckages and small fires. A short distance away he spotted the radio operator, apparently the third crew member to exit the plane. His parachute was only partly open. “I saw what was left of him,” Kinnane said. “I felt bad for him. If he had another 100 feet he might have made it. ” So hard the crash, so great the explosion, the only indication it was an airplane was a nearby engine and the landing gear. “They were inverted, sticking up in the air,” he says of the latter. “All of the rest was just busted up pieces of aluminum and junk.” Some people credit Kinnane with
warning them away from the wreckage prior to a post-crash explosion. He doesn’t think that’s right. “I told people to get away from it because it was military property,” he said. “It was maybe 12 people. They were starting to pick over it like it was a junk pile.” A while after the military arrived, Kinnane was shown to the provost marshal in charge of the MPs at Redstone. According to the Times, that was Maj. Arthur Hogan. “He kept telling me I was in shock,” Kinnane said. If that’s true, he laughed, it was because of the high-speed ride Hogan gave him over winding roads – probably Hobbs Island Road – to the hospital at Redstone Arsenal. “That,” Kinnane said, “was scarier than the plane crashing.”
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he next day in the hospital Kinnane saw Johnson and finally got his side of the story. He said Johnson hobbled out to a Continued on page 64
Mike Kinnane saw his photo in The Huntsville Times that came out the day of the crash and said he looked like a drowned rat. A ninth fatality was confirmed after the Times was printed.
One died; one was told he died; one missed his ride I n the aftermath of the worst aviation disaster in Marshall County, three related stories emerge of bad luck, bad information and one very lucky break. Geographically they span from Rhode Island to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to the 1955 Sugar Bowl … After surviving the Robert Johnson 1954 crash of from his Navy days C-119 in the northern part of the county, Robert Johnson swore he’d never ride again in an airplane. It’s unknown if he was able to keep that promise, but he did leave the U.S. Air Force and join the Navy. It’s also unknown if he was trying to stay as far from the sky as possible, but he became a submariner. His co-survivor of the airplane crash,
Mike Kinnane, called Johnson unlucky and said he was assigned to the USS Scorpion, a nuclear submarine. According to the website On Eternal Patrol, Johnson was the sub’s senior chief radioman. He had apparently moved from Tennessee to Kentucky. The submarine sank May 22, 1968, in 9,800 feet of Atlantic waters 460 miles southwest of the Azores. Johnson and the other 98 men onboard perished. The Navy’s inquiry into the sinking proved inconclusive, and no incontrovertible proof of the exact cause has been found.
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innane was much luckier and lives today with his wife, Susan, on an island off the coast of Maine. For a while, however, at least one Air Force officer thought Kinnane was among the nine unlucky victims who died in the crash of the C-119. After he was taken to the hospital at Redstone Arsenal, he called his mother in Rhode Island to tell her he was all right. About an hour later, an officer called saying he was sorry to inform her that her son was dead.
“No he’s not,” Kinnane said his mother replied. “I just talked to him.” “Ma’am,” the officer reportedly told her, “this is official Air Force business. And he is dead.”
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axter Key, Jr., of Carthage, Tenn., missed a ride but caught a truly lucky break. A 20-year-old Navy midshipman on leave, he had arranged to hitch a ride aboard the fated C-119 from Stewart Air Force Base in Tennessee to Brookley AFB in Mobile. From there, he was going to New Orleans to see No. 5 Navy take on No. 6 Ole Miss in the Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl. According to the Dec. 30, 1954, Huntsville Times, Baxter’s father – the local district attorney in Carthage – put his foot down on the flight because of the cold, windy weather. Instead, the family drove Baxter Jr. to Nashville to either catch a train or a commercial flight. It was there they learned about the crash of C-119. Assuming he made it to the game, the midshipman was lucky in another regard: Navy won 21-0. – David Moore MAY | JUNE | JULY 2017
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Shin Point climbs out of the Paint Rock valley and angles up to Grassy Mountain. The Breedens’ green house can be seen in this early spring photo above the barn, near the top of the ridge. On the fated and stormy morning of Dec, 29, 1954, the C-199 “Flying Boxcar,” with eight airmen still inside, slammed nose first into the rugged mountain side, apparently in the area of the green pines and cypress trees about halfway up the angled side of Shin Ridge. Photo by David Moore. road. In the accident report, Johnson said he saw a house but no one was home. Smoke came from the chimney of a second house but again no one answered his knock. He was limping to a third house when he spotted a truck coming. “He flagged down some guy with his dog inside a pickup truck,” Kinnane said. “Johnson asked him for a ride to a phone. The guy said OK, but he made him get in the rear of the pickup truck. I don’t know why, but the guy with the broken leg had to ride in the back” on a messy winter day. The man took Johnson to a store – Harvie Forrester’s station at the “Y,” according to the Gleam, but others say it was Click’s Store. At any rate, someone was talking on what was apparently a party line. “She wouldn’t get off, and I think he swore her out,” Kinnane said. Johnson called Brookley AFB in
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Mobile and said not to expect the C-119 because it had crashed. He got a ride back to the site with Marshall County deputy sheriffs Moose Hardin and Troy Hughes, the Gleam reported. An ambulance took him on to Redstone.
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he lone survivors visited again the following day. “I was making fun of Johnson because he couldn’t go anywhere, and I was going all over the hospital,” Kinnane said. “Then I made a fatal mistake. I said, ‘My back’s still bothering me.’ And he called a corpsman.” “I had to walk through tunnels of hallways for about four miles to some X-ray machine, and that was the last I walked for a long time.” Kinnane’s back was broken. A few days later he was taken to Stewart where he spent several months in the hospital. Afterward, he could have gotten a
military discharge but chose to finish his four-year stint. “I had it made. All I could carry was a light-duty slip and a cigarette,” he said. Kinnane feels lucky to still be in one piece, to have enjoyed a full life. But he insisted the crash was no monumental turning point for him. “It’s just something that happened, and I made it,” he said. “I’m sorry the other people didn’t ...” Nightmares and survivor’s guilt never trouble him, Kinnane said. It was, however, three years before he boarded another airplane. Then he decided he’d feel more comfortable as a pilot than a passenger, so he got his commercial pilot’s license. Later, he bought a twinengine plane and flew charter flights. Johnson, on the other hand, swore he’d never get in a plane again. (For the rest of his story, please see page 63.) Good Life Magazine
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Out ‘n’ About If you were out ‘n’ about in 1898, you might have seen E.O. Neeley, editor of The Guntersville Democrat, photographing an early-day parade of homes around Marshall County. (Dr. Dodd’s house and family are at bottom center). GLM’s editor cleaned up some of the old editor’s shots from Boaz using Photoshop. 66
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